"Although I understand it completely from a political standpoint," Passantino said, "it strikes me as not a wise way to go from a policy standpoint."
He said lobbyists play a valid role providing input to those in power, and that to forbid it would result in less informed decisions and limit the right of private citizens to petition the government.
"It's much easier to campaign on large black-and-white platitudes than it is to govern on those large, grand pronouncements of policy," he said. "And I think this is an example of that."
By contrast, Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan budget watchdog, called the new rules a good first step. "The spirit behind these rules are definitely the right spirit," she said. "But until we know exactly what this means, it's hard to know whether it goes far enough."
Despite initial pledges of transparency and rigorous oversight from the Bush administration and, in particular, from former Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., the process of spending the first half of the bailout funds has been criticized by lawmakers and oversight officials as an opaque undertaking that has played out mostly behind closed doors.
